Fearful & Shy Dogs
Overview
This is a condensed recap of the book “The Cautious Canine - How to Help Dogs Conquer Their Fears” by Patricia B. McConnell, PH.D.
This is a program for owners who’s dog has a behavioral problem that is motivated by fear.
The methods used, Classical and Counter Conditioning, are a universally effective treatment for fear-based behavior problems.
This program uses a dog that is afraid of people as the example but you can substitute out that person for whatever your dog is afraid of, vacuum, dogs, cats, ceiling fan, etc.
This program is not the same as obedience training. Obedience training is asking a dog to perform an action. When teaching a dog to overcome their fears, you learn to control a dog’s emotions. Their internal state - how they are feeling inside - drives their behavior.
Dog’s, just like humans, can let their emotions get in the way of their performance. They can’t stop barking just because you told them to anymore than you can ignore the crippling anxiety of a panic attack when told to “just calm down.”
The following steps address the cause of the problem behavior - the emotions - rather than just treating the symptoms.
Step One: Make it Safe
Write down what you need to do to ensure your dog can’t hurt anyone while you are following this program. Avoid trouble is imperative for this program to work. As you are teaching this new response to strangers you need to set up situations where the old fearful response either doesn’t occur, or it occurs at such low levels that you can easily change your dog’s emotional state. Dog’s are great at reading tension in their owners, if you are nervous your dog will pick up on it.
1. Physically Prevent Contact
If someone is stopping by and you aren’t ready for that stage of training then your dog should avoid contact with that person. Grabbing their collar and yelling “Sit! NO! Sit! Down!” is teaching your dog to be even more anxious about visitors. Avoid the situation by teaching your dog to go into another room or safely away from the door.
2. Avoid Crowded Areas
If someone looks like they might come too close (“too close” is defined by your dog). Walk to the other side of the street. If you can’t escape make sure you have a special treats or toys that will grab their attention. Keep your dog’s attention on you in a positive way while you move away from strangers.
3. Condition a Muzzle
If the dog is muzzled, then everyone can relax. This will help everyone in the long run. However, you don’t just slap a muzzle on a fearful dog, you need to condition it over at least a weeks time for them to associate this contraption with positive feelings.
See the Muzzle write-up for more information on how to condition it.
4. Here’s What Doesn’t Work
Standing beside your dog, holding them, or pulling tightly on the leash while strangers approach. Even if nothing happens, your dog may be more scared of strangers the next time because he was trapped into an aversive situation. Your chance of preventing a bite by trying to be right there and matching your reaction time to your dog’s is zero. Don’t get in a situation where you think he might not be safe. Your job is to prevent those situations.
Step Two: What Scares Your Dog?
The second step is to figure out exactly what elicits the problem behavior. It can be something very general like anyone unfamiliar who comes to the door. It can also be very specific like a boy wearing a cap, in which the dog may have had learned to be afraid of a particular boy with a cap, and then had generalized that fear to all boys with hats.
Most shy dogs are not afraid because of some abusive incident, but because they are genetically predisposed to be afraid of unfamiliar things. Some new things are scarier than others. Shy dogs are most commonly afraid of:
Unfamiliar people
Men more often than women
People with funny looking silhouettes (carrying bags, wearing hats, etc.)
People who charge up to them
Hands that reach over the top of their heads
Young children who move and speak erratically
People who are themselves afraid of dogs
Be Specific!
Write up a specific list of the things that upset your dog. Get the whole family involved, dogs act differently with different people. It’s important to know what exactly sets off your dog, is it an outstretched hand moving fast within two feet of their face? Or that same hand moving slowly but much closer to their face? You need to know exactly what sets them off because you’ll be working with those same events at an intensity level below that which frightens them. We’ll call the events that scare your dog TRIGGERS. The more specific and thorough your list of triggers, the better chance you’ll have of successfully treating your dog.
Specific Triggers Can Become Generalized
Example: Dog starts barking at the uniformed mailman for intruding on territory. It’s not the uniform that is likely setting your dog off, but more likely that an intruder has hastily entered their territory. They barge in and dash out, never stopping to perform a polite greeting like a good dog would. Since they always leave after the dog barks, the dog is reinforced for barking. After months or years of this, dogs begin to generalize; people with uniforms are territorial intruders who are best dealt with by aggressive barking.
One Event Can Include Many Triggers
Someone coming to your door, ringing the bell and entering is a single event that might contain multiple triggers. After a few months of associating the door bell with people entering, many dogs begin to respond to the doorbell as the trigger that sets them off and elicits fear and arousal, even if there is no one on the other side of the door. Possible list of triggers that can stack:
Bell ringing or knocking
You walking to front door
You opening the door
Dog seeing someone on other side of door
Person stepping over the threshold and entering
Person speaking to your dog or reaching toward it
Once you know all the possible triggers you can work on them one at a time.
Step Three: Find Your Dog’s Passions
Now you’ll want to write down a list of things your dog absolutely loves. Note I said LOVES. You need to find something they will do just about anything for. Food works well for many dogs, however for this program we aren’t talking about boring kibble or run of the mill treats. You’ll see better results with something extremely high value.
Caution About Using Food
If you are working with your dog, you might need to cut down on their meal portions. If you are using treats instead of kibble to train, then decrease their dinner by 5 or 10 percent. I’d rather the dog gain a pound or two than bite someone. You can also compensate for the extra food by adding more exercise to your daily routine. Lots of exercise is extremely helpful for fearful dogs anyway, so it’s well worth your time.
If your dog loves treats but won’t eat any during a training session, then you are moving too far too fast. Anxiety suppresses appetite, so use this as a gauge to see how relaxed your dog is and adjust your distance/environment accordingly.
Food Isn’t the Way to Every Dog’s Heart
Some dogs love toys just as much if not more than food. Play can be even more effective since it’s hard to be playful and nervous at the same time. Some dogs have no interest in balls but go bananas for squeaky toys. Spend time figuring out what your dog adores and is willing to work for.
Step Four: Linking Up the “Good” and the “Bad”
Now you’re ready to put all the steps together; you’ve covered safety, triggers (the “bad”), and high value reward (the “good”). The basis of treatment is to introduce your dog to a very low intensity of the trigger, while he’s getting a very high intensity of the treat they love. Always remember that you are teaching your dog a new response to a stranger (“Oh boy, who’s that?”). To do that you need to avoid situations where the old response comes out before you can influence your dog (“Oh no, ON GUARD, stranger coming!”).
Example: A low intensity trigger might occur when you are out on a walk with your dog and a person approaches from 50 yards away. A high intensity treat might be a piece of hot dog held right by their nose.
If your dog ignores people 50 yards away, looks tense when they are 20 yards away, and reacts when they are 10 yards away, then you’ll want to start working at 50 yards. Waiting until they are already tense (20 yards) is not helping the dog associate the stranger with good things since they are already nervous. You want to give a treat right after they see people 50 yards away.
It might seem like a waste of time to give treats in situations where you know your dog is really “fine,” but this is the key to helping your dog: starting when you can ensure that your dog associates feeling extra good with seeing unfamiliar people. For most fearful dogs, that will only happen if the stranger is at a distance.
Once you’ve given a treat change direction and create more space. Allowing the person to get closer and closer may set your dog up to feel nervous.
In summary, the first stage of treatment is to teach your dog an association between something that could scare them if it was more intense (closer, faster, bigger) and something that you know the dog loves. You do this by ensuring you have some control over the triggers, and are well stocked with your dog’s favorite treats.
How Much of This Do I Have to Do?
The key to getting this to work is to create events, over and over again, where your dog learns to associate feeling great with a low intensity version of what scares them. The number of repetitions needed vary tremendously. It could just take a couple weeks or it could take many months. What’s a few more weeks or months of training compared to many years of a happy and safe life for your dog?
Don’t go beyond this stage until your dog clearly begins to anticipate something good is happening when they see a stranger at your predetermined distance. They might see a stranger down the street and look at you and wag their tail, or try to get the tennis ball out of your pocket. Once you get this response, keep working on this phase for a few more sessions, just to ensure the response is truly learned. Always be ready to go back a step when you change contexts.
Step Five: Increase the Intensity of the Trigger
The next stage is to gradually increase the intensity level of whatever scares your dog. Always keep the intensity of the reward as high as you can (real meat anyone?).
If your dog is happy and relaxed with strangers at 50 yards, then you can start having that distance get shorter. How short depends on the dog. You could have the person start walking closer and start feeding treats at 40 yards and then have the person turn around and walk away at 30 yards. When they start moving away you stop giving treats. Unfamiliar person coming closer = goodies, and them walking away = no goodies.
If you can’t avoid the stranger getting too close, keep stuffing treats into their mouth, keeping their attention on you with the treats.
Have Others Toss a Treat or Toy
Continue over the weeks or months having people get closer and closer while your dog gets treats from you as they approach. Once they get close enough to do so, it’s time to have them start tossing the treat.
Ready for Others to Pet Your Dog?
Once your dog acts as though they want to greet strangers, you are ready to condition your dog to enjoy petting. Fearful dogs can be panicked by an unfamiliar hand reaching toward them. Just the initial hand movement toward them can be an intense trigger for many dogs. For moderate to severe cases, you must divide the act of being petted into several steps.
First, be aware of the different parts of petting that might upset your dog. The events that scare dogs in this context include:
Stranger walking directly at them
Looking directly at their eyes
Bending over them
Reaching a hand toward the top of their head.
Second, divide these events into individual steps in the same way you did with strangers approaching from a distance. The best way to introduce petting is to have the approaching person turn sideways and put their weight on their back foot. Have them drop a treat as they turn toward the dog, repeat this several times. Let the dog come to them and sniff their relaxed, unmoving hand, which only opens to drop treats. Keep the intensity as low as you can.
Good News & Bad News
The bad news is that you’re never really done with this. If you have a dog that is genetically predisposed to be fearful and/or “protective,” you will want to keep this up all their life.
The good news is that after you go through an intensive conditioning procedure, it takes far less effort to ensure your dog continues their appropriate associations. If you see signs of regression, simply back up and you’ll find you can go through the steps quickly and easily the second time around.
Summary of Treatment Steps
1. Make it Safe
Do all that you can to ensure that your dog will not be surprised and scared by whatever has scared them in the past, and do all that you can to ensure that your dog can’t possibly hurt anyone.
2. Determine Your Dog’s Triggers
Have a clear picture of the stimuli that trigger your dog’s fearful reactions. Be as specific as you can.
3. Find Your Dog’s Passion
Decide what special food or toy makes your dog crazy with desire, and withhold it except for during treatment sessions.
4. Link Up the “Good” and the “Bad”
Set up situations where your dog gets whatever they love right after noticing a low intensity version of one of their triggers.
5. Gradually Increase the Intensity of the Trigger
Step by step increase the intensity of the trigger stimulus.